July-August 2011

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Restoring the Chesapeake Bay Watershed

Federal and state grants, combined with matching local funding, help pay for projects with more than just local benefits.

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Photo: USDA NRCS

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By Margaret Buranen

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Some parts of the Chesapeake Bay are pristine, but other sections are so full of silt and runoff that they appear muddy even at ground level. Years of unregulated agricultural runoff, the growing amount of impervious surface from suburban sprawl, and the bureaucracy of several states intertwined with their own interests are the main reasons for the decline of the Chesapeake.

The Chesapeake’s watershed covers 64,000 square miles. That territory includes large and small cities, suburbs, farmlands, forests, and wetlands in Washington, DC, and six states (Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Virginia, and West Virginia).

People and organizations, including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, have been working for years to improve the bay. Now, increasingly, they are working together and taking a big-picture, watershed approach toward achieving that improvement.

The watershed approach is clearly evident in the latest round of Innovative Nutrient and Sediment Reduction (INSR) grants. These 11 EPA-funded grants (totaling $5.8 million and chosen from 89 proposals) were awarded through the National Fish and Wildlife Fund (NFWF) in late summer 2010.

NFWF has been involved with restoration of the Chesapeake Bay since 1999, awarding more than 670 grants totaling over $59 million. Local matching funds have added up to another $100 million.

Under the name Chesapeake Bay Stewardship Fund, NFWF operates both the INSR grant program and the Chesapeake Bay Small Watershed (CBSW) grants. CBSW grants, which totaled $3.4 million in 2010, are for smaller, local-level projects. They range from $20,000 to $200,000.

Amanda Bassow, NFWF’s manager for Chesapeake programs, agrees that the INSR grants reflect the growing trend of considering and creating stormwater projects in relation to their watersheds.

“I would say this is absolutely the case in the Chesapeake from the perspective of state and federal agencies and the nonprofit community that is working aggressively to improvement stormwater management in the region,” says Bassow. “Certainly, individual projects still strive to meet their permit requirements on a site-by-site basis, but in the larger picture, the types of projects we fund strive to restore the landscape function of our built environment, which means they really must have a perspective that is broader than simply one development site or parcel.”

Bassow says that the 2010 INSR awardees “represent the most innovative stormwater projects that were the most likely to have a significant impact on reducing pollution to the Chesapeake from urban stormwater.”

That urban stormwater is in unexpected places. “You see innovative stormwater management that you might perceive to be rural and therefore where stormwater might not be an issue—like Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the Onancock watershed on Virginia’s Eastern Shore,” notes Bassow.

Farming lands are disappearing from the region. Since “urban stormwater runoff represents the only growing source of nutrient pollution to the Chesapeake, it stands to reason that it is going to be an issue every place that people are building houses, starting businesses, and so on,” explains Bassow. She adds, “It’s great to see these more rural communities getting a leg up on the issue.”

These most recent grants are part of a total of 56 INSR grants made from 2006 to 2010, totaling $32.6 million. INSR grants range from $200,000 to $1 million. They were leveraged with more than $34.2 million of local matching funds. (EPA requires 100% matching for these awards.)

The projects “really represent the state of science, policy, and practice for stormwater,” says Bassow. “Some of the projects are trying to refine the effectiveness of [best management] practices, such as pervious pavement and bioretention, while others are really taking on the big policy questions, like how do local codes and ordinances provide barriers to innovative stormwater management, and how can they, instead, encourage them.”

Regenerative Stormwater Conveyance Wetlands
One of the INSR grants is for the installation of sand seepage regenerative stormwater conveyance (RSC) wetlands on two of the creeks in the Lower Western Shore of Maryland. To the $900,000 grant it received, South River Federation added $3,817,500 in matching funds for this project.

RSC technology uses a high marsh zone (-6 to +6 inches, relative to the normal pool of water) rather than trying to establish plants any lower than 6 inches below the normal pool. It features a greater mix of plants, including trees and shrubs that can thrive in water, for the wetland will do best if it is allowed to evolve over time into a forest.

Water levels don’t fluctuate as much as they did in earlier wetland restoration projects. RSC wetlands are less deep, with gentler side slopes, and definitely not as flat. They include sand weirs, pools, tree roots, and other devices to vary the topography.

RSC, also known as step pool stormwater conveyance, offers another advantage: It can be used inside natural channels without disrupting the adjacent natural ecosystem.

South River Federation chose Church Creek on the South River and Saltworks Creek on the Severn River because they are among the most highly impaired subwatersheds within the Chesapeake watershed. As the land is narrow there, these watersheds are less than half of a mile apart. The RSCs will be less than 3 miles apart.

 

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Watersheds of the Severn and South Rivers are adjoining. Their proximity to Annapolis has subjected both to increasing pollution from expanding impervious surfaces that are inevitable with development.

Church Creek is on the South River. Its watershed is 42% impervious, and it sits downstream of five major shopping centers and two major highways. Saltworks Creek, a tributary of the Severn River, is equally distressed, thanks to runoff from the nearby Bestgate Road and the expanding Westfield Mall, with more development planned. South River Federation will work with the University of Maryland’s Chesapeake Biological Lab to monitor the effectiveness of the RSCs in Church Creek and Saltworks Creek. The two-year monitoring period will assess both reduction of volume and quality of downstream waters.

Photo: River Federation Church Creek’s is one of the most impaired watersheds in the region.

The RSC projects on these two creeks will create more than 10 acres of high-quality non-tidal wetlands to treat stormwater from watersheds that continue to grow more impervious. Waterfowl and fish will gain much-needed habitat. Sediments and nutrients reaching the Chesapeake Bay will be significantly reduced.

Church Creek’s installation (set for mid-2012) will treat an estimated 2,975 pounds of nitrogen, 905 pounds of phosphorus, and 140 tons of sediment per year. The project on the Cabin Creek branch of Saltworks Creek (scheduled for late 2011) will reduce nitrogen load by 40%, total suspended solids (TSS) by 60%, and phosphorus by 40%.

The two projects should be excellent models of an innovative, cost-effective, and sustainable way to reduce pollution. Chuck Fox, special assistant to the EPA administrator for the Chesapeake Bay, suggested, at a meeting in Annapolis in October 2009, that RSC projects are applicable at many places within the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Sara Caldes, of the Severn Riverkeeper Program and South River Federation, is project manager for the Cabin Creek Branch/Saltworks Creek installation. She says she has “been pleasantly surprised by the level of support that residents and neighboring property owners have exhibited. To date, everyone has demonstrated a high level of understanding that these are distressed watersheds and a desire to see them improved.”

[much more at: <http://www.stormh2o.com/july-august-2011/restoring-chesapeake-watershed.aspx>]

SOOO, is this what John Denver was singing about? West Virginia. . .

from a Forbes blog — http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/01/17/congress-passes-socialized-medicine-and-mandates-health-insurance-in-1798/

Congress Passes Socialized Medicine and Mandates Health Insurance -In 1798

Jan. 17

 2011 – 9:08 pm | 179,899 views | 5 recommendations | 396 comments

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The ink was barely dry on the PPACA when the first of many lawsuits to block the mandated health insurance provisions of the law was filed in a Florida District Court.

The pleadings, in part, read –

The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty, that all citizens and legal residents have qualifying health care coverage.

State of Florida, et al. vs. HHS

It turns out, the Founding Fathers would beg to disagree.

In July of 1798, Congress passed – and President John Adams signed –“An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen.” The law authorized the creation of a government operated marine hospital service and mandated that privately employed sailors be required to purchase health care insurance.

Keep in mind that the 5th Congress did not really need to struggle over the intentions of the drafters of the Constitutions in creating this Act as many of its members were the drafters of the Constitution.

And when the Bill came to the desk of President John Adams for signature, I think it’s safe to assume that the man in that chair had a pretty good grasp on what the framers had in mind.

Here’s how it happened.

During the early years of our union, the nation’s leaders realized that foreign trade would be essential to the young country’s ability to create a viable economy. To make it work, they relied on the nation’s privatemerchant ships – and the sailors that made them go – to be the instruments of this trade.

The problem was that a merchant mariner’s job was a difficult and dangerous undertaking in those days. Sailors were constantly hurting themselves, picking up weird tropical diseases, etc.

The troublesome reductions in manpower caused by back strains, twisted ankles and strange diseases often left a ship’s captain without enough sailors to get underway – a problem both bad for business and a strain on the nation’s economy.

But those were the days when members of Congress still used their collective heads to solve problems – not create them.

Realizing that a healthy maritime workforce was essential to the ability of our private merchant ships to engage in foreign trade, Congress and the President resolved to do something about it.

Enter “An Act for The Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen”.

I encourage you to read the law as, in those days, legislation was short, to the point and fairly easy to understand.

The law did a number of fascinating things.

First, it created the Marine Hospital Service, a series of hospitals built and operated by the federal government to treat injured and ailing privately employed sailors. This government provided healthcare service was to be paid for by a mandatory tax on the maritime sailors (a little more than 1% of a sailor’s wages), the same to be withheld from a sailor’s pay and turned over to the government by the ship’s owner. The payment of this tax for health care was not optional. If a sailor wanted to work, he had to pay up.

This is pretty much how it works today in the European nations that conduct socialized medical programs for its citizens – although 1% of wages doesn’t quite cut it any longer.

The law was not only the first time the United States created a socialized medical program (The Marine Hospital Service) but was also the first to mandate that privately employed citizens be legally required to make payments to pay for health care services. Upon passage of the law, ships were no longer permitted to sail in and out of our ports if the health care tax had not been collected by the ship owners and paid over to the government – thus the creation of the first payroll tax in our nation’s history.

When a sick or injured sailor needed medical assistance, the government would confirm that his payments had been collected and turned over by his employer and would then give the sailor a voucher entitling him to admission to the hospital where he would be treated for whatever ailed him.

While a few of the healthcare facilities accepting the government voucher were privately operated, the majority of the treatment was given out at the federal maritime hospitals that were built and operated by the government in the nation’s largest ports.

As the nation grew and expanded, the system was also expanded to cover sailors working the private vessels sailing the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

The program eventually became the Public Health Service, a government operated health service that exists to this day under the supervision of the Surgeon General.

So much for the claim that “The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty….”

As for Congress’ understanding of the limits of the Constitution at the time the Act was passed, it is worth noting that Thomas Jefferson was the President of the Senate during the 5^th Congress while Jonathan Dayton, the youngest man to sign the United States Constitution, was the Speaker of the House.

While I’m sure a number of readers are scratching their heads in the effort to find the distinction between the circumstances of 1798 and today, I think you’ll find it difficult.

Yes, the law at that time required only merchant sailors to purchase health care coverage. Thus, one could argue that nobody was forcing anyone to become a merchant sailor and, therefore, they were not required to purchase health care coverage unless they chose to pursue a career at sea.

However, this is no different than what we are looking at today.

Each of us has the option to turn down employment that would require us to purchase private health insurance under the health care reform law.

Would that be practical? Of course not – just as it would have been impractical for a man seeking employment as a merchant sailor in 1798 to turn down a job on a ship because he would be required by law to purchase health care coverage.

What’s more, a constitutional challenge to the legality of mandated health care cannot exist based on the number of people who are required to purchase the coverage – it must necessarily be based on whether anyAmerican can be so required.

Clearly,  the nation’s founders serving in the 5th Congress, and there were many of them, believed that mandated health insurance coverage was permitted within the limits established by our Constitution.

The moral to the story is that the political right-wing has to stop pretending they have the blessings of the Founding Fathers as their excuse to oppose whatever this president has to offer.

History makes it abundantly clear that they do not.

UPDATE: January 21- Given the conversation and controversy this piece has engendered, Greg Sargent over at The Washington Post put the piece to the test. You might be interested in what Greg discovered in his article, “Newsflash: Founders favored government run health care.”

Contact Rick at thepolicypage@gmail.com

from the Capital, July 3rd: http://www.hometownannapolis.com/news/nbh/2011/07/03-43/Why-we-love-the-USA.html#cfirst

Why we love the U.S.A.

And how we’d make it better

By SCOTT DAUGHERTY, Staff Writer

Published 

07/03/11

What do you love about America? What would you change about this great country of ours?

Find Us On Facebook

AP VIDEO

more>>

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Those were the questions put forward last week to dozens of local politicians, dignitaries, professors, gadflies and county residents.

In response, The Capital received no shortage of answers. People love the freedoms outlined in the U.S. Constitution and the spirit of this nation’s citizenry. But they could do without the partisanship that often comes along with that spirit.

Here are some of their responses.

Fred Tutman, the Severn Riverkeeper

What he loves: “Free speech, a great legal system, amazing natural resources, good – albeit expensive – health care, and a country with a really big heart and an unsinkable spirit.”

What he would change: “We need to be more global in our understanding of the world and our true place in it. We are a wasteful and self-involved society obsessed with our own privileges and blind to how we fit into the present-day global village.”

The Facebook video was posted by Diana Muller, South River Keeper, at

Congratulations to all the National Geographic Society staffers who ride the Dillon Bus into 17th Street every day (there are quite a few, actually). National Geographic won the Magazine of the Year award — ASME  — http://is.gd/GgeykM